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/dev/random: Cloud Control — Future (Mis)Directions for Information Security
;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution
For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.
Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.
As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.
A columnist of my ilk (A positive, with vitamin D and sodium benzoate added to prevent spoilage) realistically has only three basic choices of topic: what’s going on with some aspect of technology now, what went on with some aspect of technology in the past, or what might happen with some aspect of technology in the future. I’ve churned out a fair amount of slush on the first two, so now it is time to offer my insights, such as they are, on what someday might have been.
Security is a crap shoot in the best of times, or maybe a roulette wheel. A roulette wheel fixed strongly in favor of the house; the house, as usual, being controlled by various unsavory elements (Sleazium, Larcenium, Felonium, et al.). Security is an abstract concept, unwieldy and unworkable in the real world. The bottom line is that where the rubber meets the road in the final analysis at the end of the day, “security” is overused and under-defined.
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